We will be using the US bankruptcy problem statement to help you understand machine learning processes in depth and also to give you hands-on experience in dealing with and solving real-world problems. All the following chapters will describe each step in detail.

The objective of the following chapters is to describe all the steps and alternatives to develop a model based on machine learning techniques.

We will see several steps, starting from the extraction of the information and the generation of new variables up to the validation of the model. As we will see, in each step of the development, some alternatives or multiple steps are possible. In most of the cases, the best alternative will be the one that gives a better predictive model, but sometimes other alternatives will be chosen owing to some restrictions that are imposed by the future use of the model or the kind of problem we want to solve.